72 THE UNIVERSITY AND WOMEN'S WORK 



between one piece of steel and another when the difference in 

 the proportion of carbon is only a tenth of one per cent. 

 Whatever we do we must not belittle these things ; they are 

 vastly important, and it is the theorist's tendency to overlook 

 them that so exasperates those who know their real value. 



All the same, do not let us be deterred from enlisting all the 

 intellectual aid we can secure in furthering all good human 

 pursuits, however much they may seem to 'depend for suc- 

 cess on experience or talent. An educational institution is 

 intended to economize experience and to develop talent. It 

 is a repository where accumulated experience is organized and 

 distributed as knowledge, and where the means of acquiring 

 experience in the most intelligent and effective way should 

 be imparted. The statement I have quoted, that a well- 

 educated woman will know what she wants to learn about the 

 household and how to learn it, and Jthat the time for learning 

 it will be when she really needs it, seems to be a negation of 

 all educational enterprise. Is there, or is there not, a body 

 of special knowledge lying near the work of a woman who has 

 to administer a home ? Is the position of such a person at all 

 comparable with that of an agriculturist or an engineer ? If 

 it is, then the province of knowledge in question is surely 

 worth cultivating. I have not a moment's hesitation in 

 answering these questions in the affirmative. There is un- 

 doubtedly a vast body of special knowledge lying in the closest 

 relationship to the administration of a home. This knowledge 

 is of a very varied kind. It may relate to the humbler house- 

 hold arts such as those of the kitchen or laundry ; it may 

 concern the more distinguished subjects of hygiene or econ- 

 omics ; or it may range into the still sublimer regions of 

 psychology and ethics. 



The short syllabus of the new courses which are being 

 established in the Women's Department of King's College 

 discloses, I think, an ample field of special knowledge which it 



